Forum onSecondary School Reform

LUIS J. RODRIGUEZ,
Author and Poet, Steven Barclay Agency, CA

A Town Hall Meeting with Luis Rodriguez

The Town Hall Meeting is the way Luis Rodriguez and the audience interact to explore the issues that affect our youth, such as gangs, violence, substandard education, poverty, the housing crisis, and more-but also the imaginative, healing, and regenerative power that lies in whole, healthy, caring, and authentic community.

LASHAWN ROUTÉ CHATMON,
Executive Director, Bay CES

Achieving Equity by Design: Leveraging Smallness to Transform Learning Relationships, Teacher Practices, and Student Results

Framed by BayCES Guiding Principles for School Redesign, this keynote address will help participants to explore three essential questions: 1) What is the real problem you are trying to solve by "getting smaller"? 2) How can you avoid reproducing inequitable results in your small learning community? And finally, 3) What does it really take to transform teaching and learning relationships between and among faculty and students? The presentation will outline promising practices and critical lessons we are learning in Bay Area secondary education reform.

Prior to becoming Executive Director of BayCES in July 2007, LaShawn served as the Director of the Oakland High School Redesign Initiative for seven years. A California native and recipient of public school education, LaShawn earned her undergraduate degree from UC Berkeley and her Masters in teaching from Brown University. With ten years of teaching experience, LaShawn has taught American and World History, Economics and African American and Ethnic Studies, most recently as a faculty member at Berkeley High School.

Tim Burns,
Educator and Author

Moving Students Beyond Risk to Resiliency

Over the past decade and more, the phenomenon of youth resiliency has been studied and its underpinnings revealed through important social science and behavioral research. These findings can have an enormous impact on student well-being, achievement, and school success. While many students experience the kind of stress, or even trauma, that can make them more vulnerable, research shows that most do cope successfully and become capable, competent adults. This presentation focuses on the single most important and often overlooked protective factor for moving students beyond risk to resiliency, and how to most fully engage it.